Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 4th, 2020

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair. Thanks to our witnesses again. It's good to see you, as always.

This morning I was reading the Samara Centre for Democracy report. It mentioned right at the beginning that during the Spanish flu there was about a 10-month period when Parliament didn't meet because of the pandemic. While reflecting on this, I thought, “My, how we've made major improvements.” The fact is that we've used digital technology, information technology, quite seamlessly from my perspective, to date to perform many of the roles and duties we have.

With that said, I wondered if Mr. Speaker could tell me how many people logged on to Zoom for the first special committee meeting that was hosted virtually.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

I believe the upper limit was 309. There were just about 290 who were actual MPs. Of course, we had staff and backup on board. Even with all the 309, had we had 338 and upwards, I believe it would have gone rather smoothly. I was very impressed with the way it proceeded.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I was as well. I guess all 309 of those individuals did not have any health risk associated with meeting that day, right?

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

That would be my assessment as well.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Great, as opposed to meeting in person, which would definitely have some health risk associated with it.

How many issues were reported on that day when 309 MPs joined in?

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Well, we had 13 altogether. Eight of them were the choice of the channel. What we've done is we've made some modifications. If you notice now, if you want to speak English, you're on the English channel. If you want to speak French, you're on the French channel. When I was giving my speech, there was a little bit of a pause in between, but it seems to have worked.

There was a third channel where it was the floor. It would recognize whether it was French or English, and the interpretation, it has something to do with the software. It's the program itself. It's something they're working on. We may come to that with time. Those were eight of the issues.

What seemed to happen was that about 70% of people were working fine on the floor level, but for 30% there would be some interference, where they would be speaking English, and there was either English translation or French translation. It really was bothering, I'd say, about 30% of the people involved.

Another five were about sound. Again, I encourage everyone to use the headset, like I have. I notice some of you are using your own. Some of you aren't using any at all—one of you, I guess. I'll leave it at that. I won't name any names. I would encourage you to get hold of your IT ambassador and see about getting one with a boom. It actually makes a difference when things are being said.

Again, with the people who were in earlier, the interpreters who were in earlier, it's not only for the MPs' health; it's for theirs as well.

One person had an echo on their channel and there were some video problems, but overall everything worked fairly well.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'd like a brief answer to this: Were all of those minor technical issues resolvable?

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

They were, and I'm hoping we will know better tomorrow whether they were resolved or not. They are fairly simple fixes, but it's a matter of figuring out what they are so we can fix them.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Great. Thank you.

It seems to me that we're on a continuum of achieving, maybe down the road, a more fulsome and formal proceeding of the House. Many parliaments seem to follow a similar path around the world. They are starting off with committee meetings that are smaller in number and maybe easier to start with, and they're moving to special scrutiny sessions or proceedings, which I think we have with our COVI special committee.

We can move down the line on that continuum. How far do you think we can go, Mr. Speaker?

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

That's a good question. Right now I'm looking down the road. Can we have a full parliamentary session virtually? I think eventually we will get there. Are we ready to do that now? Technologically I believe we can do it. Our rules, unfortunately, are in place, and they are the rules of the House. We have to contend with those rules to make sure they are flexible enough to allow virtual meetings.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I remember that Siwan Davies from the Welsh national assembly said, "Where there's a political will, there's a way.” I really related to that comment.

There is another thing I want you to dive a little deeper into. In your opening remarks you said that maybe some of the decision-making functions of the House are more dependent on or more closely connected to physical presence. Could you mention what decision-making functions you were referring to specifically? Then I want to ask you another question, if I have time.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

The big one here is the vote that takes place in the House. There are rules in place stating that members have to be in the House when the question is read and have to be in the House in their seats until they leave. That is something we have to contend with. We will have to look at that and determine how we want to do that.

I encourage this committee to look at the different possibilities. I'm looking forward to the recommendations this committee will come out with on this. Considering the changes that could happen and what's happening now in the House when the votes take place, this could mean different options for future parliaments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That's all the time we have.

Next we have Mr. Richards for five minutes, please.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Speaker, maybe you will be able to give me an answer; I'm not sure. Maybe you will have to turn to some of your officials, but that's fine. I will let you determine who's best qualified to answer.

In regard to the security aspects of our virtual sittings, have you been working or has the administration been working with the Communications Security Establishment in the development of the platform that's being used for these proceedings?

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

I will pass it over to Monsieur Aubé. He can answer that.

[Stéphan Aubé]

Yes, we have been consulting with the national security agency, sir.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Okay. It was reported by, I think, the CBC last week that Zoom “has not been approved for any government discussions” by the CSE. Obviously we've moved forward; we're using Zoom. This is the decision that was made.

Can you tell us whether CSE cautioned you against that? What were their thoughts and recommendations on the use of Zoom?

[Stéphan Aubé]

In our discussions with the national security partners, sir, we always do risk assessments for products that we want to use. In our discussions, recognizing that these are public meetings and that the Zoom platform enables us to implement the security controls that are required for a public meeting, we felt comfortable we could move forward with this platform and that this was the best choice for these types of meetings at this point.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Okay. So you felt comfortable, but what was their advice? It sounds like, based on what was reported in the media, they didn't really feel it was something that should be approved. What kind of advice did you receive from CSE?

[Stéphan Aubé]

The advice we received was that we needed to put the proper security controls in place, sir, and we did.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

What types of controls were they suggesting needed to be put in place?

[Stéphan Aubé]

Without getting into specifics—if you wanted to do that, sir, I would request that we go in camera—I can certainly share at a high level some of the things.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Sure. Let's start with that. We can always make a decision on whether we need to do anything further.

[Stéphan Aubé]

I can give you examples. There's the concept of virtual waiting rooms, sir, so that all participants can be cleared. Before someone participates in or enters a meeting, they need to be vetted through their credentials so that we know who's in the waiting room. We authenticate the participants using House of Commons authorization servers so that the identification is done through our infrastructure and we know who's participating in the meeting. We use Canadian data centres, such as the Toronto and Vancouver data centres, where the traffic and our data is hosted for these particular meetings. These data centres are owned by Amazon. We also do some geofencing, sir.

These are examples of recommendations and discussions that we shared with our partners, and not only with CSE. We're always in discussion with many partners. We also have discussions with international partners and—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Sorry; I don't mean to interrupt, but we have limited time.

With these measures in place, did CSE feel comfortable at that point and recommend that it would be okay to proceed with those specific measures in place?